Edmund barely caught a glimpse of blue sky and false sunlight before a familiar voice pulled his attention away.

“Wait a minute. I know that oppressive heat.” Lucius Durne spun on his heel to face the entrance. “Edmund!”

Edmund blinked, realizing that twice now he’d discomforted the brothers in his absentmindedness. In his time thus far in the Eternal Depths, the last thing Edmund had learned to expect when entering a new level was allies. “Right. Sorry.” He slipped the swelter ring from his finger.

“No apologies necessary,” Priam said as he approached. “It’s always best to come equipped.” He held out a hand. “It’s good to see you again.”

Edmund removed his helmet to mirror Priam’s smile and shook his hand. “Likewise.”

Lucius stepped forward and repeated the greeting, confirming their still-amicable relationship. He had saved their lives back on the seventeenth floor, but then again it’d been his mark that’d endangered them in the first place. Thrax, had it really been that long?

The Durne brothers looked much the same. They’d picked up a few scars here and there—far less visible on Priam’s dark skin than Lucius’s albino. The former seemed to have lost the tip of his left pinky finger, as superficial a permanent injury as Edmunds supposed there was.

Their outfits had changed entirely, at least on a piece-by-piece basis. They still forewent armor for loose fabric that allowed for freer motion at the cost of vulnerability, but the garments themselves had changed. Their shirts, dull green at a glance, shimmered with prismatic bands where the light caught them. Their pants sat unnaturally still, the loose dark fabric seemingly immune to any but its wearer’s influence.

Edmund could’ve spent an hour analyzing and grilling the brothers on the details of their upgrades. He obviously hadn’t been the only one to earn loot in the eleven floors since last they’d spoken. But he realized after a moment that the Durnes looked upon him with the same intensity, no doubt similar thoughts running through their heads, and Edmund took it upon himself to change the subject.

“It’s been a while. I’m glad to see you’re still standing.”

“I could say the same,” Lucius replied. “We missed you on the twenty-fifth.”

Edmund sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Hub floors have gotten… complicated.”

Priam let out a sharp laugh. “Complicated, he says. What’s so complicated about evading a few kingsguards?”

Lucius shrugged. “It doesn’t sound complicated to me. Difficult, maybe. A poor life choice to be sure, but complicated?”

“Oh, don’t be so harsh,” Priam said. “Do you really think someone who makes poor life choices could’ve made it all the way here?”

Edmund raised an eyebrow. “I think making poor life choices is a prerequisite to being here.”

Lucius grinned. “Then consider us a band of fools.”

“Powerful fools,” Priam added.

“Deadly fools.”

“Talented fools.”

Edmund’s eyes flicked from brother to brother as the two went back and forth, stoking their own egos even as they acknowledged the foolhardiness of their presence. He took the opportunity to survey their surroundings.

Harsh sunlight beat down from a cloudless sky, its celeste hue either the product of illusion magic or some other trick of Liam’s. The air was dry, discomfortingly so. The aridity more than made up for the reduction in smoke The Recluse wrought, at least as far as Edmund’s throat was concerned.

Cracked and dry earth made up the ground beneath his feet, compact enough so as to kick up dust with every step, but only just. In sparse patches, the dirt gave way entirely to dull red stone. Thanks to his trailblazer’s bonus, all of it would’ve made an acceptable source of moisture and nutrients for his rootmother’s sigil, not that he needed it between his ewer and the supply of hardtack in his camp.

The main feature, if one could call it that, was the thick tangle of briars that encircled the entrance at a ten foot radius. Edmund imagined that defined the safe starting area.

The briars themselves seemed to be made of dried out, dark brown vines the width of Edmund’s arm, each lined with three-inch-long thorns, wide at their base before curving up to brutally barbed tips, the type to tear flesh rather than simply piercing it.

The vines twisted and turned and tangled into themselves densely enough that no sunlight reached the ground below them. Edmund could only see some handful of feet into the mess, and unless they cut or burned their way through, there would be no passing through the briar.

If anything Edmund knew about the Eternal Depths held true, cutting their way through wasn’t going to work.

Going over the briars held some potential. They only reached some ten feet high, a distance Edmund knew both he and the Durne brothers could leap. They’d need, of course, somewhere to land before their mobility ran out, but that’s what scouting was for.

Alternatively, the intended path couldn’t have been more apparent. Just slightly to Edmund’s left, the briars simply split, opening up into a four-foot wide passage that stretched some dozen feet before twisting out of view. Individual vines crossed it intermittently, some resting along the ground while others hung in the air, but all could be easily dodged. They looked to Edmund more like hazards to be avoided in the chaos of a fight than actual impediments to travel.

Finally noticing that they no longer held Edmund’s attention, the Durnes followed his gaze to the floor behind them.

“The thorns are poisoned, by the way,” Priam explained. “It won’t kill you if you have the right resistances, but it’ll leave you paralyzed.”

“Of course it will,” Edmund grumbled. With the Durnes here he couldn’t count on The Island to protect him, so he’d have to count on his health regeneration to overcome any damage the toxin dealt. He hoped he could at least keep the paralysis at bay long enough to take one of the potions of curing he had stashed in his satchel, but Edmund didn’t want to count on it.

He supposed it was a good thing the brothers were there. It may’ve cost him his Solitude-based bonuses, but having an ally at hand to administer aid should he misstep was probably for the best.

“How potent is it?” Edmund asked, searching for a feel of how effective his limited potions would be.

“Don’t get poisoned,” Lucius said, his voice flat with certainty. “Don’t even touch the vines. The big thorns aren’t the only ones.”

Priam nodded. “There’re tiny spines all along them. Your armor can protect you from those, but don’t let your skin touch near ‘em.”

Edmund narrowed his gaze at the briars. So much for his heartwood idol. He couldn’t view the plant’s memories if he couldn’t touch it. A thought struck, and he looked back to the Durnes. “From those? You’re implying my armor won’t help against the big thorns?”

“They’ll punch right through anything without major protection against piercing,” Priam explained.

Edmund wondered how exactly they knew that, given that none of their gear looked remotely useful against piercing damage. His own equipment, thankfully, fared much better. “That’s pretty much just my boots, then.” He didn’t mention that his pauldrons only had moderate piercing resistance, but he imagined that’d be enough for at least glancing blows.

Lucius blinked. “Really? You’re that protected?”

Edmund shrugged. “Heavy armor has its advantages, and mine’s a bit above average.” He tapped at his shoulder, or, more specifically the challenger’s mark obscured beneath his armor.

A pair of grins stretched across the brothers’ faces. “Oh, we know,” Priam said. As one they pulled down their shirt collars, revealing matching marks decorating their chests.

“I suppose we have you to thank for these,” Lucius said. “We only asked for them after you showed us they were possible.”

Edmund blinked, his mind reeling with the new information. Thrax, even Amelia hadn’t taken a challenger’s mark. He’d known the Durnes were strong—they’d entered the Depths at a far higher level than he had—but the last time they’d met his mark had almost gotten them killed. “D… do they stack?”

“No idea.” Priam released his shirt, allowing it to cover the mark once more. “We got them at the same time, and we’ve only ever fought together.”

“We may be about to find out,” Lucius added with a smile.

The confidence in his voice clashed against the chill that ran down Edmund’s spine at the idea of fighting a three-times boosted monster. One challenger’s mark was already enough to make even the simplest of foes a deadly threat. Three sent his stomach sinking.

“I hope not,” he said. “It wouldn’t be fair. If just one member of a group is marked, they all still have to fight empowered enemies, but only the delver with the mark gets the bonuses. The only solution is for everyone to have it.”

“Oh, but wouldn’t it be exciting?” Priam cracked his knuckles.

“No,” Edmund said sharply. Thrax these two were cocky. Had they always been like this? He remembered them competing against each other back on the seventeenth floor. He shook his head. “Anything else I need to know? How long have you two been here, anyway?”

“Barely a half hour,” Lucius said. “Just long enough to run a few tests.”

“What else would you want to know?” Priam asked.

“What monsters to expect, where the exit is, how many potential paths there are to it, and how we could potentially neutralize the threat of the brambles.” Edmund counted on his fingers listed off what he considered the bare minimum of intel.

“No idea, that way, one, and unless you’ve learned to fly since we last saw you, no,” Lucius rattled off answers. “Hop up and see for yourself.”

Edmund didn’t hesitate, leaping as high as his Obsession powered legs could take him, followed by a pair of windsteps to garner enough altitude to peek over the top of the briars.

But for a sparse handful of clearings and the single winding path the the distant exit, the vines coated every inch of the vast level, reaching out in all directions as far as Edmund’s eyes could see through the especially thin smoke. He found no walls to speak of, implying the briars themselves defined the level’s only boundary. He wondered how Liam meant to stop flying delvers from wandering out of bounds. Perhaps only those without such skills ever found themselves on this floor.

“What about those clear spots?” Edmund asked as he fell back to the desert ground. “There’s gotta be something there, right?”

“Closest one is just under a hundred yards off the path,” Priam said with a shrug. “If you can make it that far without getting pricked, you’re welcome to look.”

Edmund blinked. “You can’t? Eleven floors ago you were crossing a hundred feet in a single jump.”

“That was with a wall to run along,” Priam said, gesturing up to the open air. “I don’t see any walls.”

“I’m more impressed you seem to think you can make it,” Lucius added. “A hundred yards is an incredible amount of time to remain airborne.”

Edmund raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything about remaining airborne? I intend to run there.”

Priam’s eyes fell disbelievingly to Edmund’s drelnleather boots. “In those shoes?”

“I have my ways.” Edmund shook his head. “But I can worry about that later. Let’s clear the level first. No reason for you two to wait around while I go exploring.” He left unsaid his desire to get them out of the way of his Solitude confluences.

“Very well.” Lucius smirked over at Priam. “Race you?”

Priam mirrored his expression before echoing it to Edmund. “Last one to the exit buys drinks at the next hub?”

“No,” Edmund said flatly. “We do this slowly; we do this carefully.”

Lucius exhaled. “You’re no fun.”

Edmund bit back his sigh. “I’m not here to have fun. There’s nothing fun about this place.”

“That sounds suspiciously like what someone who’s no fun would say,” Priam jibed.

Rather than dignify the taunt with a reply, Edmund simply slipped on his helmet, assembled his spear, and stepped towards the briars. “You two coming?”

They scurried after him.

Credit where credit was due, as soon as the trio left the entrance area for the narrow path through the brambles, the Durnes bantering dried up. Edmund set the pace, his spearpoint out in front of him as he led the way down the twisting trail. His head swiveled to and fro constantly, peering as deep into the briars as the false sun would penetrate. He searched for signs of motion, the pattering of feet or rustling of life within the vines.

The brothers, thankfully, joined in his vigilance. Arrogant or otherwise, the two had survived this far into the Depths.

The path itself set Edmund on edge. It was too exposed. He could only see a sparse handful of feet in either direction, yet by nature of the briars, attack could come from all angles. It was a tactical nightmare.

Were his flanks not vulnerable enough, the way ahead proved treacherous as well. Though prod and poke at it as he might, Edmund found no traps hidden beneath the arid earth, the briars themselves offered hazard aplenty. Loose thorns lay scattered about the trail, fallen from their source in just enough haphazard quantity to pose real danger to the unwary foot. At random intervals, single vines reached across the pathway, most lying directly upon the ground, but some dangling through the air as high as Edmund’s chin.

All in all, too many directions demanded his attention.

In perfect sync, the Durnes froze.

Edmund stopped short. “What is it?”

“Something’s coming,” Priam whispered. “Forty degrees to the right.”

Edmund didn’t stop to question how they knew. He sure as hells didn’t hear anything.

“Shit,” Lucius cursed. “Left too. Seventy degrees.”

The faintest of scraping sounds reached Edmund’s sigil-enhanced ears, the soft scratch of dust against stone. Sure enough, it echoed from up ahead and to the right, just as Priam had indicated.

Edmund lowered his spear.

His challenger’s mark burned.

A sharp and metallic hiss screeched through the air.

By the time he laid eyes on it, the snake was already airborne.

False sunlight glinted off dull metal scales as the reptile shot through the air. Edmund immediately gave up on impaling the thing, its six-inch diameter too small a target to safely depend on. Instead, he swung his spear in a wide arc, slamming its length into the side of the viper’s head in a desperate attempt to redirect its leap.

His hands stung as the weapon hit. His spear bounced back. The viper’s momentum barely shifted.

Edmund pushed off, taking advantage of the snake’s immense inertia to instead shove himself out of its path. It shot past him, disappearing clean into the bramble behind. “Thrax, they’re heavy!” he called out.

“I noticed!” Priam shouted behind him.

Edmund kept his eyes fixed on the spot his snake had disappeared, catching the brothers’ struggle only in his periphery. Light erupted from Priam’s hand as he ducked beneath the snake and uppercut its jaw. Lucius mirrored the strike from above, inky blackness crackling like lightning as he dodged to the side and hammered his fist down atop the creature’s head.

Shards of metal chipped off, deep dents carved into viper’s neck on each side. It still didn’t stop. The thing left Edmund’s field of view before he could watch it vanish into the briars, but it didn’t take a vast logical leap to figure out that’s what’d happened.

For a moment, all was still.

“These things are tough,” Lucius muttered.

“Don’t seem too deadly, though,” Priam said. “Only a single set of fangs to avoid.”

“They’re not trying to bite you,” Edmund snapped. “They’re trying to knock you into the thorns.”

“Then just don’t get—” Priam cut off as a snake—Edmund’s from the look of it—launched directly for his throat. He dropped to his knees, allowing the metal beast to pass overhead, until its tail suddenly dropped, cracking down like a whip midair. Before it could shatter Priam’s nose, a pale white aegis flickered into existence. The strike bounced clean off, sending the snake tumbling off balance.

Instead of vanishing into the briar, the beast crashed directly into one of the vines, snapping the thick branch like a dried-out twig. Lucius darted in, taking advantage of the moment’s stillness to wrap his hand as far around the snake’s body as it could reach. An ebon tendril bridged the gap between his middle finger and thumb, pulling the digits together tighter and tighter, yet somehow, rather than the flesh and bone of Lucius’s hand, the dense metal between gave way.

The snake fell to the ground in two pieces.

Before Edmund could marvel at whatever the hells that had been, the second snake made its move.

The encounter didn’t favor him. The creatures had ambushed them, robbing him of his multipliers from The Warmonger, The Tactician, and The Guerilla. Combined with his imminently clear lack of Solitude bonuses and the quick-and-deadly nature of the fight countering his Perseverance boons, Edmund simply lacked the firepower to readily deal with the tough reptiles.

That didn’t stop him from trying.

He marked his Target as his eyes fixated on the two dents the brothers had left in the first exchange. He crouched down and raised his spear in a feint, forcing the snake to twist out of the way of its tip. The maneuver sent it just wide of Edmund’s helmet, directly over his right shoulder—his right shoulder equipped with a pointed rockjaw pauldron.

Edmund timed his Savage Rend for the moment the viper’s damaged jaw passed above the tip of his pauldron. Energy drained from his body as the ability carved into the metal snake, cutting deep and jagged into its throat.

It failed to cleave through.

His shoulder armor stuck partially into the creature’s neck, the thing’s momentum knocked Edmund back. He fell hard into the briars behind him, its thorns etching deep lines into puncture-resistant armor. His pauldron itself, his one under-powered piece, survived by nature of the fall. Still embedded, the viper’s head struck the briars first, keeping the pauldron itself away from the deadly thorns.

A second Savage Rend separated its head from its body.

Edmund panted.

Lucius offered a hand to help him up. “You get pricked?”

Edmund took it. “I’m fine.”

“So,” Priam said, his eyes fixed on the fallen snake as the dungeon reclaimed it, “snakes.”

“Tungsten constrictors, apparently,” Edmund said, reading aloud the smoky letters that drifted off his dead foe. “They drag prey into the briars and let the poison thorns do the work for them.”

“What do you think the mark did?” Lucius asked.

Edmund shrugged. “Probably made them tougher. Never seen anything survive my Savage Rend like that.”

“Could be they were made of some softer metal before we showed up.” Lucius theorized. “Umbral Guillotine worked well enough, but it’s slow. Need to keep them out of the briars long enough to cut through.”

Edmund nodded, wishing not for the first time that he still had some heartwood sap. Controlling the brambles would’ve made this floor vastly easier. He wracked his brain for ideas. Lack of firepower had never been a difficulty for him. It was possible Collateral Damage would fare better than Savage Rend, but Edmund doubted it. Either way, neither Edmund nor any of his gear would survive the skill’s double-edged nature better than the snake did.

“It’s a bad matchup for me,” Edmund admitted. “Probably best I keep them busy while you take them out.” He looked to Priam. “Do you have a-um… some kind of light version of Umbral Guillotine?”

Priam grinned. “Something like that.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Edmund said. “Let’s do this.”

At the Durnes’ nods, Edmund set off once more, deftly weaving his way around fallen thorns and errant vines, his spear raised at all times, ready for the next ambush.

They didn’t make it far.

As before, two tungsten constrictors burst from the briars in near sync. Edmund’s first tactic was to bind the two together with a Smoke Lash, thus preventing them from disappearing into the vines, but as he cast the spell, it swung like an ordinary whip rather than the prehensile tendril he’d come to expect.

Weird.

The encounter ended much the same as the first, with Edmund holding the snakes in place by standing in their way and allowing them to tackle him into the bramble. He kept his shoulders forward in a ploy to keep the pauldrons safe, but the thorns still burrowed deep into the rock. At least thus far, none had pushed in enough to reach his skin.

On they went.

For not the first time Edmund mourned the loss of his shield as he settled into his role as the party’s tank, taking impact after impact while the Durnes executed their targets. Limited as his defensive capacity was, they made it remarkably far before one of Edmund’s pauldrons collided with a thorn in just the right way to sever the strap that held it in place. When Priam offered a hand to help him up after the fight, the pauldron slid right to the ground.

The other pauldron survived three more encounters before it too failed.

The instinct well-honed to keep his shoulders forward whenever a snake bowled him over, the small, unprotected gap between his cuirass and rerebrace didn’t actually pose any issues as the trio worked their way through the last of the floor’s base encounters, leaving Edmund to wonder if perhaps he should’ve taken the pauldrons off from the outset if only to preserve them.

Thrax, he’d been losing a lot of gear lately.

It came, then, as a wondrous relief when they rounded the final bend to see the brambles open up into a circular clearing with a large, freestanding doorway at its center. A chime rang out. A chest crafted of the same tungsten as the snakes, inlaid with rubies, arose from the floor.

Lucius patted Edmund on the back. “Well fought. Sorry about your shoulder pads.”

Edmund sighed. “They were over twenty floors old. I was due for an upgrade anyway.”

Priam elbowed him in the ribs, a gesture that might’ve hurt had Edmund not been wearing armor. “How much do you want to bet there’s a set of tungsten pauldrons in there?”

Edmund shook his head. “If there weren’t before, there are now. You know how this works: ask and you shall receive.”

Lucius blinked. “Really?”

Priam tilted his head to shout to the sky. “Any chance there’s ten thousand platinum in that chest?”

“Don’t push it,” Edmund said, making his way to the chest. He knelt before it, digging his knees into the ground as he lifted the heavy lid. Within, sure enough, was a set of pauldrons of the same dull metal, carved in the shape of a snake’s head complete with fangs poking down just past where his shoulder would go. The smoke gave him the details.

Snakeshead Pauldrons

Provides inviolable protection against piercing, blunt force, and corrosive damage. Vulnerable to magic damage.

Edmund blinked. “You two ever heard of ‘inviolable protection?’”

“Holy shit, really?” Lucius bolted to his side. “I’ve never heard of anything that good showing up before the forty-fifth floor. These have gotta be worth a fortune.”

“Inviolable means… inviolable,” Priam oh-so-helpfully explained. “Outside of something that actively changes the properties of the metal, nothing will ever… what is it?” He leaned in. “Nothing will ever pierce, dent, or corrode them.” He let out a whistle. “You won’t be losing these any time soon.”

“Since those are clearly yours, that would mean these…” Lucius’s hand darted into the chest to withdraw a pair of tungsten bracelets. “Are for us.”

Edmund only managed a glimpse of the name before Lucius donned his and tossed the other over to Priam, the name told him enough.

Tungstenskin Bangle

Priam’s eyes shot open. He turned his head back to the sky. “Actually, forget the platinum!” he shouted. “This is better.”

Edmund looked up at him. “Do those do what I think they do?”

Lucius beamed. “Skin as hard as tungsten. Lasts five minutes on a two hour cooldown.”

Edmund exhaled. It was a bit less objectively insane than the ongoing effect he’d suspected, but the utility was clear. Most fights went well under five minutes, so with enough patience to wait out the cooldown between encounters, they may as well have been permanent.

A dark thought crossed Edmund’s mind. Of everyone he’d met in the Depths thus far, the Durne brothers seemed far and away the least likely to wait two hours for an item. Liam had to have done that on purpose. “You’ll have to wait out that cooldown after every fight.”

“That’s only if we use it every fight,” Priam countered with a confident grin. “Far easier to simply not get hit.”

Edmund scowled beneath his helmet. This wasn’t going to end well.

Nonetheless he pushed himself to his feet and strapped on his new pauldrons. He’d learned long ago that delvers were a stubborn lot, and he simply lacked the charisma to change anybody’s mind.

“Well then,” Lucius said, slipping the bangle over his wrist, “I believe that’s our cue to press on. You’re sticking around to explore those clearings?”

Edmund nodded. “That’s the plan. There’s gotta be something out there.”

“Best of luck, then.” Lucius held out a hand. “It’s been a pleasure delving with you. May our paths cross again in the not-too-distant future.”

Edmund shook it. “Perhaps even sooner.” If the timer on Edmund’s mark of the shrouded gauntlet was any indicator, the odds were good he’d see the brothers again in just a few days. He didn’t tell them that. The last thing he wanted was to explain how he knew the dungeon was going to close for maintenance, and the Durnes hardly needed the foreknowledge. They weren’t being chased by kingsguards.

“Edmund,” Priam offered a hand of his own. “Always a joy to see you work.”

“Likewise.” Edmund patted him on the arm as they shook hands. “Be careful down there.”

“Never.” Priam smirked.

With that the Durne brothers turned and took their leave. Edmund lingered for a moment, staring into the darkness between levels even after the pair disappeared, letting his mind turn over their time together. He worried for them. The two were incredibly competent delvers—arguably more so than Edmund himself—but they seemed to ardently refuse to take the dungeon seriously.

Edmund sighed and shook the thought from his head. He couldn’t change them. Instead of letting his mind wrestle with it, Edmund shut his eyes and focused on his constellation. He’d missed it in his fervor to complete the planned confluence, but The Anarchist, the impossible Aspect that contained Madness twice in its makeup, was only a tier 6. It had room for another base Aspect without repeating.

Loath as he might’ve been to upgrade an Aspect that thus far seemed to do very little, the prospect of a potential tier 7 and all the level-ups that came with it was too great to deny. Without much additional thought, Edmund selected The Anarchist and Perseverance, and made his newest confluence.

Tier 7 Aspect: Inevitability (Perseverance and The Anarchist) - Silver+ Resonance

Level 1 - Provides increased damage every time one of your attacks fails to kill its target.

Edmund blinked. The description didn’t specify exactly how much bonus damage it offered, but the core concept seemed remarkably powerful. Theoretically, as long as he kept throwing punches, he could take down anything. Thrax, this would’ve been nice against the snakes.

A quick scan through his constellation confirmed that Madness, Perseverance, Wrath, War, Elements, The Recluse, The Tactician, The Guerrilla, and The Anarchist had all leveled up without updates to their description. Only two of the component Aspects had noticeably changed.

Solitude, upon hitting level fifteen, no longer listed its perception bonus as “lesser.” The Philosopher, in contrast, had completely changed yet another time.

Tier 3 Aspect: The Philosopher (Elements and The Recluse) - Silver+ Resonance

Level 5 - Open the way.

Edmund couldn’t quite nail down why, but something about the Aspect felt… different. It seemed to hum in his ear, its silver star pulsating with eager energy. Not even Madness did that.

His thirst for progress satisfied if not his curiosity, Edmund dismissed his constellation and set his sights on exploring the level at large. He leapt up to survey the expanse of briars. Sure enough, the intermittent clearings stretched out far into the distance, each some couple hundred feet further away. A handful of options presented themselves as potential starting points, but Edmund opted for the opening nearest the exit, both for convenience’s sake, and for a more tactical reason.

If he stood atop the open loot chest, he could leap to the correct altitude with only one windstep rather than two.

A plan in mind, Edmund paused to open his portable camp, take a sip of water from his ewer, and deposit his satchel within. Everything packed away, he stepped up onto the tungsten chest, lined up his target, and jumped.

His first windstep took him high enough to Break Through, launching himself forward a few dozen feet and providing the momentum he needed. As his leather clad foot descended towards the deadly vines, Edmund took advantage of an upgrade he’d earned several floors ago.

He featherstepped.

The sole of his boot barely touched upon the thorny tangle before it propelled him up and forward again. Solitude’s celerity and Obsession’s strength sent him forth in inhumanly great bounds, covering several yards with each leap before his next featherstep repeated the process. By the time he’d used all ten, his Break Through was already off cooldown. He didn’t need it.

Edmund’s second windstep brought a stop to his momentum as he landed in the first clearing, a five-foot radius of bare dirt surrounded by the brambles. A faint rustle caught his attention.

His head spun to the left just in time to spot a snake, its scales no longer metal, but the same pale brown as the briars, leap for him. Edmund bent his wrist to free up the tip of his unassembled hyper-magnetic spear and swung his arm up in a great arc at the snake.

Savage Rend cleaved it in two.

Edmund exhaled. Thrax were these things easier without his challenger’s mark empowering them. The vast difference in power level almost made him believe the three marks had stacked. That’d certainly explain why he’d received loot with three inviolabilities.

For safety’s sake, he reassembled his spear in the moment he had while his steps recovered, then charted his path forward. For lack of the loot chest to start from, Edmund had to angle his Break Through higher, costing him a bit of forward momentum. It meant having to use the ability again the moment it came off cooldown to make it to the next clearing, but that meant little to Edmund. It wasn’t like he needed it to defeat the snakes.

Mad dash by mad dash he traversed the clearings, pushing further and further away from the level proper until the path and exit alike both faded into the distance. There were only the briars, vast and seemingly unending in this hostile desert of a floor. The false sun beat down, sending beads of sweat down Edmund’s neck even with the haze of smoke shading him.

Even more so than for his cooldowns, Edmund stopped to drink, the near constant running regularly sending him into his tent to rehydrate.

Miles of running, of leaping, of fighting later, the clearings just… stopped. Further ahead the brambles stretched on for as far as the eye could see, a dark brown blanket with no end.

It didn’t take long to find the burrow. Just opposite the way he’d come, a hole some four feet in diameter opened up in the earth, falling nearly vertically into darkness. Trouble was it sat just beyond the clearing, its entrance effectively blockaded by a barrier of vines. If he were particularly careful, Edmund might’ve managed to sneak a hand through the gaps, but never his entire body.

He’d need another way through.

He supposed it might’ve been possible to expand the hole into the clearing through a series of Magma Fissures, but if that didn’t violate the no tunneling clause, Edmund didn’t know what would. Once again, Edmund lamented the use of his heartwood sap. It would’ve trivialized the removal of the vines.

Instead, he’d have to find another way.

He plucked the low-hanging fruit first. Savage Rend, activated with the tip of his spear from a safe distance, managed to cleave right through a couple of vines, but dry and rigid as they were, he’d need several cuts just to move them at all. By the time the skill came off cooldown a third time, his first cut had already begun to fuse itself closed.

The bramble was more alive than it seemed.

Edmund spent a half hour pursuing the strategy, optimizing to clear as much space with as few cuts as possible, but no matter how he went about it, the vines regenerated faster than he could Rend them.

So Edmund withdrew his focusing lens.

Familiar, by now, with bramble’s resilience, he didn’t bother starting slow. Edmund went straight for Firestorm.

An angry torrent jetted from the lens in his palm, bathing the desiccated vines in flame. They didn’t melt. They didn’t catch. They did shrivel.

A series of explosive pops met Edmund’s ears as liquid within the vines flash boiled. Tiny impacts struck his armor where little thorns flew free, lethally toxic projectiles striking back against the source of the flame, as if coming to the briar’s defense. Edmund twisted his neck to face the openings in his helmet away from the onslaught and kept casting. His armor could more than handle a few airborne thorns.

Against the focused beam, the brambles shrunk and curled in on themselves, retreating from the burrow they covered as Edmund’s most powerful spell forced them back. By the time the Firestorm ended, the front half of the hole lay exposed.

It stayed that way for all of eight seconds before the bramble reclaimed its lost territory. That was good enough.

Edmund had his way in.

He didn’t like it. It’d mean descending into the burrow almost completely out of mana, in a rush to get through before the vines covered the entrance, and without an immediately clear way back out. Presumably the same trick would work from below, but in the Eternal Depths, presumptions killed.

Perhaps more to Edmund’s dislike, was that the nature of the trick would shut the proverbial door behind him. Once he was in, there’d be no retreat.

That wasn’t going to stop him. He’d resolved long ago to claim all there was to take, and here the dungeon had presented him with something to take. Because the floor had been cleared, whatever was down there wouldn’t be empowered by his challenger’s mark. Edmund felt confident he’d be able to handle it.

He’d not rush in, of course. There was preparation to be done. First and foremost, the only light that made its way into the hole came from the false sun above and pierced no further into the shadows than a yard or two. That wouldn’t do. His sigil of the slumbering deep may’ve granted him lesser darkvision, but anything alive down there would function far better in that gloom than he. Edmund had a better idea.

He opened his tent to grab his satchel from where he’d left it, digging through the worn leather for a piece of rounded glass he’d wrapped in one of the towels he’d found in his tent.

Even obscured, the luxstone—as the smoke had called it—outshone the sun.

He slipped the stolen loot into his pocket and returned the satchel to his camp before again setting his sights on the brambles. Once more his focused Firestorm forced them back, once more his armor weathered the storm of exploding thorns. This time, Edmund slipped in the opening he’d created.

Inside, he wedged his feet into the opposite edges of the burrow, holding himself aloft just beneath the recovering vines. Peering down, he saw only darkness. He kept the luxstone hidden.

Minutes passed. His knees ached with the effort, the joints not built to support his weight at such an angle. Edmund ignored it, focusing on his breathing while he waited for the fog of spell casting to withdraw from his mind.

Only once his mana had fully recovered did Edmund turn his gaze upward, peeking through the gaps in the vines into the daylight above. His pupils tightened, acclimating to the bright outside rather than the dim depths below. Without allowing them to readjust to the darkness, he at last reached for the luxstone. Even accustomed to the light, his eyes ached just looking adjacent to the glass.

He didn’t hold onto it for long. Without a second thought he dropped it, letting it bounce and roll along the burrow’s walls until it disappeared around a bend. Edmund followed its light.

Finally able to spot where the tunnel flattened out, Edmund happily let himself fall the dozen feet to the floor, windstepping twice along the way to cancel his momentum. He walked along the sloping path at a crouch, the four-foot tunnel far from able to support his full height. He didn’t have to travel far.

The luxstone had landed at the center of a spherical chamber, some ten feet in radius. The burrow spat him out a third of the way up, leaving Edmund a treacherously steep incline to descend into the space itself. He held off, lingering at tunnel’s mouth as he shielded his eyes from the luxstone and peered through the gaps in his fingers at the room as a whole.

Its lone occupant, unsurprisingly a snake the same dull brown as the others, recoiled against the back wall, head pressed eyes first into the dirt as it tried to escape the blinding light. The serpent’s body stretched the same four feet wide as the tunnel through which Edmund had entered, its length obscured in the ways it folded over itself.

Edmund didn’t stop to read the letters of smoke that drifted off of it.

He darted in.

The giant snake didn’t even react to his presence, the luxstone overwhelming its senses beyond any impact Edmund could make. The beast only acknowledged his presence when the tip of his spear met its neck.

It may’ve been huge, but it was made of flesh and blood. Savage Rend, empowered five times over by as many Aspects, severed the beast’s head from its body in a single blow.

It fell to the ground.

A chest arose at the cavern’s center.

Edmund let out a breath.

Panic arose in his heart as Edmund watched the giant snake dissolve to feed the dungeon. All this distance, all this difficulty to reach it, and the monster that had almost certainly been a rare boss had died in a single blow without so much as putting up a fight.

It was too easy.

Sure, the luxstone was a powerful artifact he wasn’t supposed to have, but trivializing a boss fight felt… wrong.

But a loot chest awaited him. Better yet, his constellation tugged at his subconscious. Edmund answered.

Sigil of the Bramble Constrictor

Your weapons, claws, and teeth inflict foes with a paralytic venom on blood draw. Gain increased grasping strength. Gain lesser atmospheric taste.

Edmund didn’t hesitate to replace his mostly-defunct rootmother’s sigil with his newest boon. He hoped the paralytic venom it mentioned was the same that coated the thorns. From what the Durnes had told him, it was incredibly powerful. The other two bonuses looked less useful. Grasping strength seemed like a particularly narrow piece of utility, while atmospheric taste—intriguing as it sounded—came to Edmund as more of an annoyance.

When he opened his mouth, he tasted smoke.

Given the vast variety of situations the Depths threw him into, the odd sense would probably come in handy at some point, but the cost of tasting the smoke in the air was neither pleasant nor comfortable.

But Edmund hadn’t come here to be comfortable.

Shutting his mouth to banish the unsavory flavor, Edmund moved to the chest. It mirrored perfectly the tungsten one by the exit, a strange similarity considering the boss itself hadn’t used the metal.

That didn’t stop Edmund from opening it. Within he found a pair of knives that matched the thorns he’d spent the past several hours avoiding, following the same curved pattern to a deadly point. They stretched nearly two feet long, far larger than the thorns they mirrored, and the concave side had been sharpened to a razor’s edge, but otherwise they looked like giant brown thorns with handles.

Bramblethorn Daggers

Deals massively increased piercing damage.

Edmund’s eyes widened. Of the two properties the thorns had, the daggers had certainly taken on the better. Assuming they worked the same as the thorns, these would punch right through anything without major piercing resistance. Alongside his newest sigil, they effectively recreated the brambles themselves.

He noted that while the interior edge was sharp, the curved daggers only empowered piercing damage, not slashing damage. He wasn’t about to complain.

Edmund spun one of the weapons in his hand, only muscle memory from his time with Rat’s Fang taking over. It’d been some time since he’d wielded a dagger, but his hands hadn’t forgotten.

He slipped the blades into his belt, collected the luxstone from where he let it lie, and turned to depart. He didn’t make it far.

He’d expected the tunnel to be closed off—it’d been closed before he’d even left the entrance. He hadn’t expected the vines to start working their way down. Already they’d pressed nearly two feet into the burrow itself, encroaching on what’d once been the serpent’s territory.

Edmund didn’t waste a second. He windstepped up the vertical shaft, reaching for his focusing lens as he planted his feet into either side of the dirt walls. Before the bramble could expand any further, he released his Firestorm.

The vines recoiled. Thorns burst and rained down on him, bouncing off his helmet and pauldrons. He kept his left hand hidden within his pocket, his right protected by the very flames that raged from it. By the time the spell ran out, he’d bought himself three entire feet of extra space.

Only a few inches of which opened up into the clearing.

By the time his spell came off cooldown, the vines had already reclaimed their lost territory and pushed yet further into the burrow. Again Edmund cast, and again he bought himself time and space but not an escape. His head pounded from the mana expenditure.

He let himself fall to the shaft’s floor as the realization sank in. The boss fight hadn’t been easy because of the luxstone. It’d been easy because it wasn’t over. The giant snake may’ve looked like a boss, it may’ve rewarded loot like a boss, but it wasn’t the true danger.

The vines grew deeper.

Pushing past the mana drain, Edmund reached for the luxstone once more, this time testing a theory he’d had since he’d claimed the strange item. He held it up, keeping the palm of his hand between it and his eyes. His other hand raised the focusing lens.

It took some effort—precious minutes he didn’t have—to line it all up correctly, but soon enough, a light nearly as blinding as the source itself refracted off the nearest vine. Within moments, a black spot appeared, then a hole, then the vine was completely severed.

The next one was out of focus. Edmund gave it a few more attempts, but the vines refused to burn. The luxstone-lens combination seemed able to cut through nearly anything remarkably quickly, but the time spent aiming and focusing it made the whole process slower than Savage Rend.

Edmund cursed. Another dead end.

He tried everything. Firebolt barrages, Break Through, focused Firestorm, every permutation and combination of spells, abilities, and items at his disposal, Edmund threw at the problem.

And bit by bit, the vines grew deeper, further entrenched in his way, closer to reaching for the boss room itself.

There was no way out.

Adrenaline coursing through his veins, Edmund frantically searched every inch of the underground chamber, every piece of gear on his person, in his satchel, or hidden away in his tent, every sigil and title and Aspect to his name.

There was no way out.

He yelled to the gods, to Thrax, to Liam. Nobody answered. The vines pushed into the spherical chamber, trapping Edmund for good, entombing him in the barrow he’d willingly entered.

There was no way out.

Open the way.

Edmund’s eyes snapped shut. His constellation flickered into view, twenty nine stars against the darkness behind his eyelids. Madness shone with its usual prismatic glimmer, but Edmund’s gaze glossed over it, drawn instead to a strangely pulsating silver.

The Philosopher beckoned.

Edmund dove into it, focused in on its thrumming gravity, on this Aspect he’d leveled up time and time again for seemingly no reason but the promise of future power. Closer and closer he gazed upon it, until the darkness and the smoke and racing of his heart all gave way to that shining argent.

The warmth of the false sun drew sweat from his brow.

Edmund’s eyes shot open.

The cavern was gone.

The tunnel was gone.

The encroaching vines and their inexorable advance was gone.

He stood in a clearing, the arid heat beating down upon him from a cloudless sky. To his left sat an open loot chest of tungsten inlaid with rubies. To his right, an open doorway led to an impenetrable darkness.

Edmund blinked. He was out. He’d escaped.

He shut his eyes once more, looking again to the Aspect that had so freed him. The Philosopher had gone still. It hummed, it pulsed, it beckoned no more. Its power was spent. Edmund knew not if or when it would come off cooldown. He knew not how it’d worked or if he’d ever learn to control its effect.

All he knew was that it’d saved him when nothing else could.

And with that harrowing realization, with one mystery solved and a dozen new ones to take its place, and with the understandable decision that he’d seen enough of these Thrax-damned brambles, Edmund closed his constellation, opened his eyes, and stepped into the darkness.

Hivemaster Edmund Montgomery Ahab, The Crimson Hand

Aspects Unlocked: 29

Tier 1 Aspect: Wrath - Red Resonance

Level 8 - Provides access to the Brutalize active ability.

Tier 1 Aspect: War - Gray+ Resonance

Level 14 - Provides a lesser increase to all damage dealt. Provides a lesser decrease to all damage taken.

Tier 1 Aspect: Elements - Gray Resonance

Level 13 - Provides access to the Firebolt spell.

Tier 1 Aspect: Solitude - Red Resonance

Level 15 - Provides a greater increase to constitution while fighting alone. Provides a lesser increase to celerity while fighting alone. Provides an increase to perception while alone.

Tier 1 Aspect: Perseverance - Gray Resonance

Level 14 - Gain health regeneration. Gain greater health regeneration outside of combat.

Tier 1 Aspect: Madness - Prismatic Resonance

Level 23 - They’re coming for you.

Tier 2 Aspect: Vengeance (Madness and Wrath) - Silver+ Resonance

Level 1 - Reveals all enemies that have damaged you in the past two minutes. Provides a lesser increase to all damage dealt to such enemies.

Tier 2 Aspect: Fervor (Madness and War) - Gold+ Resonance

Level 1 - Empowers the effects of Madness and War for each consecutive second spent in battle.

Tier 2 Aspect: Sorcery (Madness and Elements) - Gold Resonance

Level 2 - Provides access to the Smoke Lash spell.

Tier 2 Aspect: Obsession (Madness and Perseverance) - Gold Resonance

Level 4 - Gain strength and agility for each consecutive day spent pursuing your obsession. Gain mana for each consecutive month spent pursuing your obsession.

Tier 2 Aspect: The Recluse (Madness and Solitude) - Gold Resonance

Level 7 - Empower the effects of Madness while alone. Lessen the effects of Madness while accompanied.

Tier 2 Aspect: The Island (Solitude and Perseverance) - Gray Resonance

Level 8 - Grants greater resistance to over-time effects while in groups of two or fewer.

Tier 3 Aspect: Focus (Elements and Obsession) - Silver Resonance

Level 2 - Doubles spell damage when attacking a single target.

Tier 3 Aspect: The Challenger (War and The Recluse) - Silver+ Resonance

Level 1 - Provides access to the Challenge active ability.

Tier 3 Aspect: Artillery (War and Sorcery) - Silver+ Resonance

Level 1 - Provides access to the Firestorm spell.

Tier 3 Aspect: The Warmonger (War and Obsession) - Silver+ Resonance

Level 1 - Provides a greater increase to all damage dealt and a greater decrease to all damage taken while engaged in combat you initiated.

Tier 3 Aspect: The Philosopher (Elements and The Recluse) - Silver+ Resonance

Level 5 - Open the way.

Tier 3 Aspect: The Rift (Madness and The Island) - Gold Resonance

Level 7 - Provides access to the Savage Rend active ability.

Tier 4 Aspect: The Tactician (War and The Philosopher) - Bronze+ Resonance

Level 4 - Deal double damage when executing a pre-crafted battle plan.

Tier 4 Aspect: The Target (War and Focus) - Bronze+ Resonance

Level 1 - Allows the marking of a single enemy as the target. The target takes increased damage from all sources.

Tier 4 Aspect: The Fissure (Elements and The Rift) - Silver Resonance

Level 4 - Provides access to the Magma Fissure spell.

Tier 4 Aspect: Rebellion (War and The Rift) - Gold+ Resonance

Level 2 - Grants resistance to mind controlling effects. Deal bonus damage to enemies above your level.

Tier 5 Aspect: The Guerrilla (Wrath and The Tactician) - Bronze Resonance

Level 3 - Take reduced damage while executing a non-conventional pre-crafted battle plan.

Tier 5 Aspect: The Breach (War and The Fissure) - Bronze+ Resonance

Level 1 - Provides access to the Break Through active ability.

Tier 5 Aspect: Discord (Wrath and The Fissure) - Bronze+ Resonance

Level 1 - Brutalize has a chance to turn your foes against each other.

Tier 5 Aspect: The Insurgent (Wrath and Rebellion) - Silver+ Resonance

Level 1 - Provides access to the Collateral Damage active ability.

Tier 6 Aspect: The Reckless (Wrath and The Breach) - Tin+ Resonance

Level 1 - Provides access to the Reckless Charge active ability.

Tier 6 Aspect: The Anarchist (Madness and The Guerrilla) - Platinum+ Resonance

Level 2 - Be uncontrollable.

Tier 7 Aspect: Inevitability (Perseverance and The Anarchist) - Silver+ Resonance

Level 1 - Provides increased damage every time one of your attacks fails to kill its target.

Delver’s Mark of the Challenger

Empowers nearby dungeon monsters. Significantly increases the value of loot chests you open. Slightly increases the resonance of Aspects you unlock.

The Crimson Hand

Grants minor resistance to piercing damage. Bestows ownership of the Dread Gauntlet of Kor’Ilinesh.

Hivemaster

Grants lesser tremor sense. Bestows the right to challenge other hivemasters for control of their hives.

Trailblazer’s Sigil of the Azure Adept

The fifth step on the Path of the Azure Fox. Increases agility. Grants two windsteps. Grants ten feathersteps. Increases positional awareness.

Trailblazer bonus: Sharpens hearing.

Sigil of the Bramble Constrictor

Your weapons, claws, and teeth inflict foes with a paralytic venom on blood draw. Gain increased grasping strength. Gain lesser atmospheric taste.

Sigil of the Slumbering Deep

Gain greater health regeneration. Gain immense health regeneration while sleeping. Gain water breathing. Gain lesser dark vision. Gain lesser subaquatic sonar.

Delver’s Mark of the Shrouded Gauntlet (Temporary)

Rewards loot of the Shrouded category based on the number of floors cleared while the mark is worn. Prize to be granted at dissolution of mark.

Time Remaining: 4 days.